On Saturday 25th January it’s the Chinese New Year – the new year being the year of the rat. To this end we have embraced Chinese themed activities this week alongside our Winter theme.

We have found China on the map and discussed what we might find in China –  of course the panda bear was a popular choice so our small world play revolved around pandas. Lots of lovely stories were developed using the pandas as the children played.

We added a Chinese restaurant to our role play and the children got dressed into some traditional Chinese clothes to partake in meals at the restaurant. The chopsticks proved a challenge for most children … cleaning the floor of rice at the end of the day proved the challenge for us!!

We listened to the story and then saw a short video depiction of the Chinese story of The Great Race which tells of how each of the years of the Chinese zodiac were named. The children then had to order the animals from first to twelfth … this was easier said than done. Some children had an animal – the other children had to direct them where to stand to get the animals in the correct order.

Our fine motor skills were exercised by trying to fill the bowls and packets with rice using the tweezers… some children found a much easier way to achieve this… borrowing the spoon from our Chinese restaurant was a much quicker and far more successful method!

Everyone had a go at Chinese Bingo – matching the themed pictures and all enjoyed trying to write numbers in Chinese!

More fine motor work, cutting,  folding and sticking a Chinese dragon.

Our igloo building project came to a close and the children have been enjoying playing in our igloo, reading in our igloo and explaining to any class visitors just how it was made. Unfortunately quite early on our roof effort collapsed so we have put an icy  cover over instead!

Our stick collecting was very fruitful and the children have made some wonderful wintry trees.

Following our Winter theme we have all named and smelt a variety of winter vegetables and discussed how/ where they might be grown and if they have eaten them before. Mrs Mooney and I did the chopping ( as the knives were very sharp!) and we made some tasty winter vegetable soup. All the children had a taste, some enjoyed it more than others.

Alongside all this fun we have been finding number bonds to 10, reading individually and in groups, blending, learning new sounds and writing some winter words for our winter tree display. We have had circle times, written our traffic light sentences , made dark and light collages for our RE lesson, as well as using the litter pickers to keep our playground a tidy and nice place to be. In PE we are during a gymnastics topic and the children are working together stretching, rolling, jumping, and balancing.

Have a great weekend Oak Class families. Just a note – I’m away next weekend and might not get the chance to download photos and type up a Blog as I won’t have access to a computer. I will try my best before I go!

Thanks , Erin Bibby

Hello!

Another happy week gone by in Reception Oak Class. Remaining with our wintry theme we have spent a long time looking at the globe and seeing the land and seas of planet earth. We’ve learned that polar bears live in the Arctic and the Penguins in the Antarctic, found these destinations on the globe and talked about how different the Arctic and Antarctic are to where we live. In RE  we have talked about looking after our world – and what we can do to help. Starting with keeping our own bedrooms tidy! … and then keeping our classroom and immediate environment a clean and nice place to be.

Our number work has focused on the numicon pieces. Our jobs this week have included working out that a bigger number is represented by a larger piece, that all the pieces representing one number are the same size, shape and colour. We have moved on to finding pieces of numicon to place together to make a larger number – this is leading up to us learning number bonds – specifically to 10.

Our sounds and phonics work has continued with  Z ZZ QU SH and CH.

This snowman phonic game proved a popular activity this week, reinforcing all or sounds.

Snowman building out of playdough for fine motor work this week.

Getting everyone reading is our big push this term now we have nearly all of our sounds. Knowing the sounds seems to be easy – it’s the blending  that’s tricky- do practice at home at every opportunity! Lots of children enjoyed completing our cvc word puzzles. I hope everyone has had a good try at their reading book. There will be a new reading book each week. Please do find the time to sit down and help your child sound out the words.

Our milk carton igloo is going strong… and taking much longer than expected!!  The children are really enjoying finding the right size carton and ensuring it’s placed the right way round and in the right place. They are enjoying getting the hats, gloves and scarves on when it’s their turn to help!

Our number of the week and number bag is back. Well done this week – 16 – what a tricky number!

During mix-up the Reception children have an opportunity to play and laern in the nursery area too. Here are a few pictures from mix-up fun!

Have a great week!

Happy New Year and welcome back to school for the Spring term. I hope everyone enjoyed a peaceful Christmas time and managed a few pyjama days! Once again thank you all very much indeed for the very generous and amazing array of Christmas gifts for the teachers!  We were overwhelmed with your thoughtfulness, kindness and generosity. Thank you all very much.

Back to school business and out topic for the term is OUT AND ABOUT. We are starting by looking at seasons and the weather. Our first look is at WINTER. We have begun by each making a snowflake… following instructions, folding, cutting, unfolding all easier said than done, so we were very proud of the snowflakes everyone produced.

Our small world play took us to the snowy arctic where the children used their imaginations to make up some wonderful snowy stories and even an igloo- a particular mention to Iris here who very much enjoyed our frozen world.

Fine motor skills and counting were combined as the children challenged themselves to see how much snowy Lego they could fill the snowman with using the tweezers with a time limit. They then counted their results.

Our creative task encourage everyone to make a polar bear face for our wintry display …

Fun and fine motor had the children painting ice-cubes! Again easier said than done – no hands allowed to help – just the pant brush – ice is even more slippery than you think!

More number work – deciding on number bonds – choosing a piece of numicon, recognising its number value and then finding two more pieces that will match its size exactly. Now you know which two numbers can be used to make a certain bigger number! This numicon play builds to help the children understand value of number and adittion.

We have found out a little about the Inuit people who live in snowy, cold lands in the polar regions. We have learnt that the Inuits are nomadic people living across Greenland, Alaska and Siberia. We have watched a short video clip of an Inuit family building their igloo to protect them from a forthcoming storm.  Thank you to all who have provided a 4 pint,  clean, milk carton – our igloo building began with gusto but came to a halt when we ran out of special glue! We will resume building next week! We are happy to receive any more clean,  4 pint milk cartons! Thank you.

More snowy activities have included salty snowflakes which have a lovely rough texture and reflect the light – all will be added to our Winter display.

We have had stories about weather from Sam Usher – Snow. Rain and Sun and are continuing next week with more snowy stories.

Our role play area – including our igloo building has also been full of hats, gloves, scarves, ear-muffs and mittens to enable us to wrap up as we build our own igloo. The children thoroughly enjoy getting themselves all wrapped up !

This weeks sounds have been J V W X Y. All the children have practised saying, reading and writing our new sounds. Our new writing focus is an activity called Traffic Light Sentences, where the children choose a red, amber or green sentence to read and then copy. This enables them to understand as they write, that  they need to think of a sentence as a whole and that it is split into a series of words.

From this week everyone has a  ‘ reading book’   in their book bag. If your not sure which book it is please check the inside back cover of the yellow reading journal. This book is for the children to try and read to you.  It won’t be easy and will be time consuming. Please only embark on it when you have time to sit down and focus on this. If you are stressed or your child isn’t interested please don’t do it! It will put them off before they’ve even started. Even if they sound out one or two words in the book this is a start – you read the rest to them. They will find CVC words easiest – such as pig or bin. However frustrating the learning to read process is – please give lots of praise for any interest and willingness to have a go!   GOOD LUCK parents and carers!

That’s all for this week. Enjoy the weekend